Markus Persson, also known as Notch, made a name and a small fortune for himself by developing Minecraft. More recently his development studio Mojang created a Humble Indie game in 60 hours and managed to raise over $682,000 for various charities.

Development on Minecraft continues and Scrolls is in the works, but Notch has turned his focus to a new game and yesterday posted a teaser site detailing what it is.

The game carries the unusual name of 0x10c and will be an MMO set in space. Just as CCP does with Eve Online, the game will continue to progress even when you aren’t logged in, suggesting your character/ship can be setup to do things while you are away.

Details are obviously very thin at the moment, but Notch has given us a general outline of the background to the game. It’s actually set in the year 281 474 976 712 644 AD in a universe on the edge of collapse. The player is tasked with managing a ship that has a generator and fully-functional 16-bit CPU.

What’s interesting is the generator has a limited wattage that the player needs to manage based on what they want running on their ship. Everything requires power, so a strategy will be required depending on what you want your ship to do (mine, combat, courier?). It also looks as though the CPU will be programmable with Notch releasing the full spec as a text file.

Space battles, engineering, mining, trading, looting, and an advanced working economy are all promised. The game will also follow the same model as Minecraft where it gets released early allowing players to take part as it develops rather than waiting for the finished experience.

0x10c is sure to have thousands of players signing up from day one because this is Notch, and he’s already proven he knows how to make a popular game. Only time will tell if he has an idea that works as well as Minecraft.